April is here

This Friday, Ward Stothers, with author Bill McKnight to moderate, Rev Jack lamb to bless us and the librarian Mark Knowles to host us; Ward will officially launch his book.   

Plain Drink Tea  is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.  The book can also be downloaded from Kindle.

With three sections, peace, prayers, and a cuppa, there is diversity you can use to warm your soul and encourage your actions.  An introduction and a postscript completes the story.  We do make a difference each one of us. 

Our Irish journey is taking a turn and we return home to California in two weeks for at least six months.  At this point it seems our base will return to Berkeley. Forays back to Northern Ireland will happen as projects warrant.  We are already talking about next year's Passion Walk in Belfast.  Ward and Bill have a concept for another book and some friends never made the pilgrimage to Ireland.

The John Hewitt Int'l Summer School

http://www.ulstertatler.com/2013/07/26th-john-hewitt-international-summer-school-kicks-off/

The ultimate in some circles is to appear in the Ulster Tatler.  It is the magazine that you find in upscale dental offices.  Huge glossy format with lots of photos of people dressed up and having fun.  Marda made it to their website and remains to be seen whether she will make it in print.

Ward and Jon attended the whole Summer School. Ward read his poem "Traveler" on the last day and got good feedback from many.  Marda ran around Armagh pursuing genealogy and discovered a Tom Stothers, a man who had done lots of work on the family tree had died last March.  We thought he lived in England but he was nearby in Loughgall.

One nice happenstance was Marda went into the First Presbyterian church in Armagh to find a near copy of Townsend Street Presbyterian designed by Young and McKensie and built the year following 1878.  The minister, Rev Tony Davidson, is also a poet and published his poetry as a fundraiser for the church.  This provides a nice encouragement that there is some precedent for publishing poems and prayers.  There are no Stothers in their 1840-1850 records.

Nose to the grindstone.  Lets get the manuscript put together.  

Long Days of Summer

As we leave the longest day we appreciate every bit of sunshine.  We don't get it often.  Despite the cloudy weather and sometimes rain it is daylight for quite a while from 4:45 am until 10 pm with light in the sky before and after this sunrise and sunset.

We celebrate the success of Ward's good friend Bill McKnight's book Loud Silence with a final slot in a reading of 13 writers at the MAC.  He was brilliant, as they say here, and the writer in residence who pulled the reading together was very complimentary to Bill.  Congrats.  To buy his book go to Amazon or www.loudsilence2012.wordpress.com

Bill McKnight reading at the MAC